It’s the noticing that cracks us open, lets something in.
Shows we’re in use.
Uses us.
Right now. Right this minute.
Lia Purpura’s “Recurrences/Concurrences”
Writing is an act of vulnerability, both in the writing itself and in the sharing. The one requires being open to the joy and pain of others. The second asks you to crack yourself open and let others see you.
The second perhaps is the one more easily understood. Exposing oneself to scrutiny is never easy, not even for the most outgoing of people. Risking vulnerability is an act both destructive and creative. It breaks even as it builds.
The first is in no way easier than the second. It isn’t safe to share in another person’s suffering or even excitement. How to weep with another person? How to rejoice when one’s own heart is breaking?
The act of looking, of being empathetic, is one of sharing. It is an act that changes both people. It allows “something in,” and that something is transformative. It’s impossible not to be changed as one pays attention to the world and people around oneself.
Such an act is one of courage. It’s scary and dangerous to be empathetic. It is, however, one of the only ways to become a better writer and storyteller. To write stories, the ones “that stick with you” as Samwise Gamgee would say, is to feel more, risk more. It’s to bear another person’s burdens and give voice to a pain or happiness that that person cannot. It’s to allow oneself to become intimately acquainted with another’s emotions and thoughts about that experience, to take them into oneself, to develop a new perspective on a situation, and to allow those things to be expressed through the writer and in the writing.